Compression seals are common among portable products requiring environmental and water sealing. Some compression seals are used on products requiring sealing on more than one plane. For example, Motorola's watch pagers typically use compression seals for sealing a non-planar housing. Compression sealing typically provides a strong seal, but increased cost in terms of manufacturing, assembly time, and parts. Compression seals typically require a compression force on opposing housings applied by clamping or screws. Radial seals are generally easier in assembly and usually cost less in terms of parts. But when a seal is required for a non-planar housing, radial seals have not been found to exist. Since radial seals are generally restricted to one plane, design flexibility is hampered. For instance, if some features on a radio require sealing while other features do not, there are limitations dependent on the location of a planar radial seal as to where those features have to be within the product. Sealed features and non-sealed features will have to be located on opposing sides of the single plane of the seal. Therefore, a need exists for implementing a lower cost radial seal in a non-planar housing that would provide greater design flexibility.
Referring to FIG. 1, a conventional radial seal 6 is formed between a first housing member 1 and a second housing member 2. The radial seal 6 is typically formed using an O-ring 3 having an unloaded diameter 4 as indicated. The O-ring is radially compressed to form a loaded diameter 5 which is typically the width of the channel between the two housing members. The conventional O-ring is mounted on a single plane to provide an equivalent radial force (or horizontal force shown by 4) throughout the perimeter of the entire O-ring. If the housings members were compressed sufficiently to deform the O-ring 3 to the extent of forcing the O-ring to touch the bottom portion 2 of the second housing member, a radial seal would no longer exist; Rather, a compression seal would be formed since a partial vertical force would be applied to the O-ring 3. Thus, a true radial seal would have no vertical forces (in the orientation shown) and only horizontal forces or radial forces.